MEYERBEER.
"Thou knowest not the day nor the hour." Scarcely two years ago the great composer, whose recent death involves so irreparable a loss to the world of musical art, was accosted, while in a Paris coffee-house, by a friend recently arrived from Berlin.
"What do they say of me there?" asked Meyerbeer, after the first salutations.
"They say, with regret, that you are just now as reticent as Rossini."
"Indeed!"
"Yet, after all, they add that you are busier than Rossini, for he is doing nothing, and you, at least, have an opera in your portfolio."
"Ah! I see you are hinting about the 'Africaine'."
"Yes, I refer to the 'Africaine'."
"Bah! bah! The Parisians are in a great hurry about it. I am not dead yet, and some fine day I will astonish them in a way they will remember."
Providence decreed that this harmless boast, this careless prediction, should come to nought. While he was yet working on the "Africaine", the hand of death interposed, and, at the cold touch, the pen was laid aside, the music-paper dropped unheeded on the floor, the piano was silent, and the composer left forever the scene of his labors and his triumphs. Few men might, at the last hour, be more justified in pleading, with earnest anxiety,—"Not now!—not now!"